Register or Log In

Social Audit Network (SAN) Frameworks

Keywords:

Social Audit establishes a team to measure the creation of social good, which includes representatives of the stakeholders. It is extremely powerful for ensuring that an organisation is clear about its social aims, values and objectives, and that the outcomes or objectives of a particular programme or service are clear and align with the organisation's social aims, values and objectives. It is a comprehensive framework which allows an organisation to build on existing information systems to account for and report on its social, environmental and economic performance.

The SAN (Social Audit Network) represents the standards body and can provide external independent auditors to verify an organisation's Social Audit and add credibility with funding bodies.

An audit is often resource-intensive and goes through three stages:

Planning

Accounting

Reporting and audit

The unique feature of SAN is that the process is verified by an independent external Social Auditor.

Although these standard approaches take more work and often require an independent consultant or auditor to verify the work done, this makes them much more credible with organisations that provide the funding, or with Council Members/ Trustees/ the concerned Public who want to be sure that their money is being spent wisely.

SWOT

Strengths

Weaknesses

Forces the organisation to clarify the social responsibility of a whole organisation or division of an organisation, and how it is abiding by its guiding principles

Includes stakeholders on the panel so the social good reported represents the social good received by the stakeholders

Regular reporting reminds people of the aims, values and objectives of the organisation. A Social Audit would usually be included in the organisation's Annual Report

Verified by an external accredited auditor (although any of the other processes could use an accredited auditor)

Fairly resource-intensive. A Pentagon Partnership report indicated that organisations didn’t keep up their commitment and resources and therefore didn’t complete the SAN, though this will depend on whether the funding providers make SAN a priority or not

Doesn't translate the benefits into a financial value, making it difficult to demonstrate Value for Money or to make decisions on how to make investments of resource

Opportunities

Threats

Can build up expertise (eg SAN is respected regionally in North East England because of strong championing by Traidcraft) and interest until it becomes the de-facto approach

SA (and the Social Accounting Network (SAN)) put in place a set of principles that can be used for many other purposes, including other forms of Social Reporting such as SROI

Useful internally for management purposes

Many investors including commissioners of services, grant awarding bodies and the public want to see what Value for Money has been achieved. If the social good reporting resists assigning a financial equivalent value, then it risks being overlooked by people wanting a "headline" of effectiveness

Resource Use

Social Audit can require a full-time team including representatives from your stakeholders - it can be a very powerful management tool but with a corresponding cost.

You can also take a much lighter touch approach, and put in place measures in all of your management processes which collect the data, only reviewing them periodically for example in time for management decisions.

Verifiable

Ideally, all Social Audits will be verified by a qualified external Social Auditor (accredited by the Social Audit Network SAN) before being published. This adds a level of credibility although the external Social Auditor may not get to see how the information was gathered and collected as the only requirement is that they chair a panel discussing the report. It is unlikely that Social Audits will include systematic bias.

Quantified

Social Audit generally does not report the value of any benefit, unless it has been measured in financial terms from the start - it doesn't, for example like SROI, try to assign a Financial Equivalence.

However many Social Auditors use SROI or Cost-Benefit techniques to include this information in Social Audits

What it is good for

Social Audit reports how well an organisation is performing against its stated aims for social good. It is a powerful management tool for decisions taken internally and focusse the organisation. Also because it is externally verified, it has high credibility with stakeholders including many funding bodies such as Local Councils and Central Government.

Most Recent Blogs

So you want the opportunities to find you. You want to promote your business without putting any effort in - or at least you want some business coming to you instead of chasing it all the time. You may be fed up witll filling in Pre-Qualification Questionnaires (PQQ) and never getting selected, or a scatter gun approach to responding to tenders.

Keywords:

Bringing jobs to the North East, to the English Regions, to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is going to take a bit of imagination. Our focus needs to be on infrastructure, on creating links with the rest of the world and on demonstrating that the United Kingdom is, in fact, United.

This can be done with Infrastructure - high speed rail links linking not the cities, but the airports. So a commercial traveler passing through can stop in two airports (one for arrival, another for departure) and talk to two lots of suppliers or importers, and the jobs will follow those conversations.

The public sector in UK will spend £730.4 billion[1] over 12 months 2013/14. A bit of digging suggests that around 37% goes to the independent sector[2]. That’s £270,248million (£270billion) paid to independent companies – commercial organisations and voluntary/ community sector and charities – to provide goods, works and services.

We're delighted to make the Social Return on Investment (SROI) report on Phoenix Futures' National Specialist Family Service available.

The National Specialist Family Service supports parents to overcome their substance misuse addictions, and keep their children. Drug abusers learn to recognise the triggers for their urges and control them. They learn to be good parents and to manage the routines of family life.

For a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis, the auditor has to do primary research. This means that it’s the beneficiary (or victim), the Social Workers themselves, who confirm how much benefit or return on investment that they get. It isn’t someone else “answering” on their behalf.

Social Return on Investment, or SROI, asks beneficiaries to put a value on the benefits to themselves. In traditional Cost Benefit Analysis, the project manager decides on the value and who it accrues to, and this has led to a certain amount of optimism bias in business cases and a general avoidance of independent evaluation. So SROI figures are not only more conservative/ cautious, but also endorsed by the beneficiary who will ultimately have to demonstrate that they have gained that value. It all starts with identifying the main beneficiaries.

Pages

A major cost in many businesses is project failure, due to using unqualified and inexperienced project managers. We include the highest qualification internationally, RPP, to deliver leadership to keep you profitable and successful.Learn more

Do you know what the return will be on your investment? What about hard to measure things like Quality of Service, Staff Well Being, Quality of Life, Digital Inclusion? How do you know the right amount to invest? How can you convince your sponsors or get government grants? Learn more

Many organisations struggle to write the bids and proposals that win them the business they need. It isn't rocket science, but it’s often a job that nobody wants to do. Our expert team can help you find opportunities, open doors, qualify bids in or out, and then prepare the paperwork that propels you to success. Learn more

People come to work to do a good job – if only they knew what a good job is … What if your employees, volunteers and others were fully committed to your organisation's objectives, and could see day by day how much contribution they were making.